More than 8 million people showed up across 3,300 No Kings protests on Saturday, calling for an end to the war in Iran, immigration agents in their communities and what they see as Trump’s creeping authoritarianism. Organizers say it’s the greatest number of protests in a single day in US history.
But movement scholars say social change doesn’t begin and end with one protest. It takes activism at the local and national level, and in a variety of forms, to bring about change.
“No Kings was conceived to unite a cross-movement push against authoritarianism. And there is not one way to fight it,” said Leah Greenberg, a co-executive director of the Indivisible Project, which founded the No Kings movement. “We see No Kings as part of a tapestry of defiance that is going on.”